It was December 24th 2000, the best and worst Christmas of them all. My family and I were so excited that Santa was going to come and see us that night. We helped out around the house all day; just to be sure that Santa would come. I remember so clearly, making cookies with Grandma, decorating the Christmas tree, and best of all doing jigsaw puzzles with Grandpa. Once Grandma and Grandpa left our house my brothers and I got even more anxious for the night to come.

We all went to sleep shortly after that, but something different was going on, I could tell. In the blink of an eye I woke up hearing the sound of my brothers creeping outside my bedroom. I shot up out of bed just in the nick of time to catch my brothers watching Santa put our presents under the tree. Remembering that our mother had told us that if Santa caught us awake we wouldnt get our presents, we ran back to our bedrooms and fell fast asleep. As I lay in my bed dazed about what just happened, I thought to myself that Santa happened to look a lot like my Grandfather. I figured it was just my imagination: I fell fast asleep. In the morning we all woke up excited to see what presents were under the tree. We searched and looked at all of the presents, shaking and listening to them all. Maybe we could figure out what was inside. Our Mom and Dad finally convinced us to leave the presents just as we found them until Grandma and Grandpa came over.

They finally got to our house; it took them a whole 45 minutes. We all were so anxious to open our presents. We opened all of our presents and loved everything we had received. We thought it would be fun to start a new tradition that year. We made a birthday cake for Jesus, and sang happy birthday to Him. That night we all got into our car and drove through the town admiring all the beautiful Christmas lights. We all laughed and enjoyed that Christmas so much. This was definitely the best Christmas ever. None of us knew it was going to be the last Christmas we got to spend with our Grandfather. He passed away two months later. We all miss him very much, but have great memories of that last Christmas we got to spend with him.

Hannah High is a student in Alan Peoples freshman language arts class at Polk County High School.